Second month

Over the time it gotten easier to produce different sounds and expressions to be understood by her mother. She liked this mother of hers. Deep down inside she couldn't consider as her real mother, but the feeling of being loved by what she was, without discrimination was something she hadn't been used to in her previous life. She liked being cuddled by this woman. She took great care of her.

She could see a bit further, and distinguish a bit more than blurry colours. Her eyes would instinctively follow the moves of objects near her. She had now a greater liberty of moves with her arms, but only when on the back. On the belly she had no idea how to hold her head up more than a few seconds. It was a real hassle. She was immobilized, waving arms and legs everywhere and tiring herself for nothing. Well at least she had gotten better with gripping things with both her arms and clutching her to herself.

Some people came to see her, and she identified them as the friends of her mother. They didn't itch either, so it was fine to her. Granted, she didn't felt them like she felt her mother. They seemed thin to her, almost non-existent. Her father had come back as well several times, but she would always start crying in pain whenever he was too close. So he would call her name from afar, saying things she couldn't get. He sounded sad, that man, and she understood him. She understood how being rejected by your own family felt, and she tried to steel herself. One day, maybe, she would be able to see her father closer. For now, the only thing she became better at was guessing when he was getting closer to her, and anticipating the pain with the increasing itches.

She would try to get him close to her, cooing of joy, trying to wave her feeble hands at him. Sucking on her thumb, clenching her gums, she would look at him and he would get close. He would say reassuring things, but in the end she couldn't stand his presence.

There was a guy who came once she had managed to handle. She shouldn't have remembered, but this one encounter made her mother and father angry at each other. Not the doctor guy with his long haired hair, but another girl. Mother was talking sharply with him, and he had come with long strides to her. It had hurt at first, like needles piercing each cell of her body. But then it was like his presence had diminished! The piercing howl she had produced had ended up with a harsh cough until the man was right in front of her. He had held her to his face, and glared at her. Never had she liked people glaring at her, even in her previous life. So she had given him a cold look in return, and she swore she almost saw the faintest grin tugging one of his lips. Then he put he down coldly and exited the room, said a word to her mother and was gone. Honoka didn't know what transpired of this meeting but after that, her father's presence lowered as well and he could finally take her in his arms.

Not to say that she was utterly disappointed with him. Her father wasn't ugly or anything but he wasn't beautiful. He was this chubby bearded man with everything round and dull about him. His face was round and dull, his eyes were round and dull, even the dark marks under his eyes were dull… She had waited all this time for this? She couldn't believe it! Her mother was a blonde woman with a thin frame and beautiful wavy hair curling around her face. she could tell she was very beautiful with her wide green eyes and her angelic face. She couldn't tell how her father managed to get such a woman at his side. Nothing was interesting about him. And he hadn't been the one to guess how to approach her.

The other man who had carried her had had an interesting face, like a bird of prey. His squinted grey eyes had looked sharply at her. It had been the most interesting thing that had happened to her in days!

Honoka was starting to resent this new life a bit. She was getting bored and annoyed that she couldn't do anything! Her body wasn't strong enough, and she had the hardest time trying to control her moves! Yet everyone praised her effort with cheers. When would all these woman coming to see her mother, and these kids invading her house when her mother wasn't available always cheering when she did anything. She felt like the messiah while doing nothing.

And there was also this feeling of awkwardness. Granted that reincarnation wasn't given to everyone, but if people were reincarnated, why did everyone seemed so impressed with her development? If everyone was reincarnated at one point, there was surely other "genius" people like her. Because if this place regrouped all the people going in their next life, people should be expecting more of her, right? So all these cheers might mean she was one of the rare people reincarnated among the whole people dying every day. They said the Earth population was getting bigger and bigger, like they were about 7 billion people when she was gone, and scientists had said they should be 10 billion people in thirty years or so. Did that mean there were new "souls" manufactured everyday, to throw in the mix?

Plus, it wasn't fully logical because she was in a place where everything was a bit different from her previous life. There was modern stuff like radio or plastic objects, but also old stuff in wood, but she couldn't tell what was new and what was old: this new culture seemed a bit too off for her. This culture felt like a mix between Asia (the clothes, the food, the language) and America (the little bits of English here and there in their expressions, the architecture maybe). Did it mean she had landed in a parallel world or something?

And to get back on this reincarnation thing. Let's imagine that there is like 6 million people dying on Earth every day. The more frequent causes of death overall might be birth complication, young children dying, the lack of medical care in the less developed countries, cardiac or brain diseases for the old people, war, pollution, car accidents… So is there some sort of recycling system which quantifies if someone is worthy or not? There were several religions in her old world, and only looking at the most important ones like Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and so on, each one of them had different rules, and most of them didn't speak of reincarnation much. Plus, if people had been reincarnated, apart from Jesus, they should have raised their voices and explained the whole rebirth thing in afterlife.

Which means she had landed in a very weird place, which didn't look like purgatory, and where people didn't expect reincarnated people either. So why here, and why her? How had she been chosen? Did she have some sort of holy mission or something? Was there people above expecting her to do something? She had never been someone exceptional in her previous life, and she couldn't remember how she had died.

Maybe not remembering was the key. Maybe a lot of people were reincarnated but forgot their previous life (or lives). But why didn't she? Or has it already begun, but she didn't see it? Honoka couldn't tell. They said most people didn't see themselves decaying when they were mentally ill, but if she had to rely on the people around her… They didn't know who she had been before, nor what she had been able to do! All they could do was praising the great baby she was! And that started to seriously get on her nerves.

The only thing she knew is that being in here itched and hurt more than it should, that her new life sucked, and that she couldn't understand one word of what was told to her! Seriously when she had been young she had been taught English and Spanish in school. She spoke and read her mother tongue and the two other languages fairly well, but this? She couldn't even make heads and tails of the sentences!